RS

EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The National Rifle Association’s Excuse Holds No Water

The National Rifle Association and its supporters are pushing back against conservatives who have accused the NRA of selling out to the left. The NRA worked with Democrats to carve out an exception from a new anti-free speech piece of legislation.As the Wall Street Journal notes, “Under the NRA carve-out in the House bill, the new rules won’t apply to any organizations that have been around for more than 10 years, have more than a million members and receive less than 15% of their funding from corporate donors. That fits the NRA nicely, though as best we can figure, everyone else, from the Sierra Club to Planned Parenthood, fails to qualify.”Push back from the NRA is very simple. The NRA claims it is a single issue organization solely focused on the second amendment.If that is true, why is the NRA dabbling in a first amendment issue? Well, from the NRA’s own statement the NRA says, “The most potent defense of the Second Amendment requires the most adamant exercise of the First Amendment. The NRA stands absolutely obligated to its members to ensure maximum access to the First Amendment, in order to protect and preserve the freedom of the Second Amendment.”Oh, so they are a two issue organization — defending the second amendment by using the first amendment. If that is truly the case, how then does it help the second amendment to have every other political organization bound by this new anti-free speech legislation except the NRA?The answer is that it does not help the second amendment. It helps the NRA. And the NRA is perfectly happy to use Democrats to acquire for itself monopoly status. The NRA wants to make itself the indispensable man on the second amendment.And that will be well and truly good for them until all the other organizations get weaker and weaker and some enterprising leftists in government then kill the NRA’s exemption. Hiding behind the NRA to eliminate all the other pro-freedom groups and then eliminating the NRA when no one else is left is just downright Alinski-ish.We hang together or separately.